''Rhodoleia championii'', the Hong Kong rose, is a species of

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

in the family

Hamamelidaceae Hamamelidaceae, commonly referred to as the witch-hazel family, is a family of flowering plants in the order Saxifragales. The clade consists of shrubs and small trees positioned within the woody clade of the core Saxifragales. An earlier system ...

. It is a small evergreen tree with dangling scarlet flowers that are pollinated primarily by birds, and is found in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

and

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

Description

''Rhodoleia championii'' is a small evergreen tree growing to a height of about . The bark is smooth and dark brown. The leathery, glossy-green leaves are stalked, oblong or obovate, measuring by . The leaf base is broadly tapering and the apex is obtuse or widely acute. The underside of the leaf is greyish, usually smooth but sometime with the remains of stellate brown scales. The scarlet flowers are borne on short peduncles in the axils of the leaves, and are pendulous, long and wide. Each flower has several whorls of rounded bracts, many spatulate petals, stamens the same length as the petals and a slightly shorter

style Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to: * Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable * Design, the process of creating something * Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...

. The fruit is a five-chambered capsule containing flattened, yellowish-brown seeds.

Distribution

This species is a native of southeastern Asia. Its range extends from Myanmar, Malaysia and Vietnam to China and Indonesia. It occurs in both lowland and upland primary and secondary forests. It was first found growing in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

in 1848, but has since been propagated there to increase the number of specimens in the wild.

Ecology

The flowers of ''R. championii'' are mainly pollinated by birds; at one site in the Nankunshan National Forest Park in the Guangdong Province of China, the flowers were observed to be visited by seven different species of nectar-foraging birds, the most common visitors being

Swinhoe's white-eye Swinhoe's white-eye (''Zosterops simplex'') is a bird species in the white-eye family Zosteropidae. It is found in east China, Taiwan, north Vietnam, the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo. Taxonomy Swinhoe's white-eye was formally descri ...

s (''Zosterops simplex'') and

fork-tailed sunbird The fork-tailed sunbird (''Aethopyga christinae'') is a bird in the family Nectariniidae. The species was first described by Robert Swinhoe in 1869. It is found in China, Hong Kong, Laos, and Vietnam. Its natural habitat is subtropical or ...

s (''Aethopyga christinae''). The flowers were also visited to a limited extent by

bumblebee A bumblebee (or bumble bee, bumble-bee, or humble-bee) is any of over 250 species in the genus ''Bombus'', part of Apidae, one of the bee families. This genus is the only extant group in the tribe Bombini, though a few extinct related gener ...

s and

honey bee A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current co ...

s. In the Dongguan Mt.Yinping Forest Park in

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, China it is the dominant tree along with ''

Pinus hwangshanensis ''Pinus hwangshanensis'', or Huangshan pine, is a pine endemic to the mountains of eastern China; it is named after the Huangshan Mountains in Anhui, from where it was first described. Description ''Pinus hwangshanensis'' is an evergreen tree ...

'', and the main constituents of the shrub layer are the grass ''

Miscanthus floridulus ''Miscanthus floridulus'', the Pacific Island silvergrass, is a species of perennial grass in the family Poaceae. Use In the Highlands Region of Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua ...

'' and the bamboo ''Indocalamus tessellatus''.

Status

''Rhodoleia championii'' has a wide range and grows in both primary and secondary forests, regenerating freely in cleared land and beside roads, and the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed its conservation status as being of "

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

". It is considered a "

vulnerable species A vulnerable species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being threatened species, threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatened species, ...

" in China.

References

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q3336766 Hamamelidaceae Taxonomy articles created by Polbot